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I was planning on increasing the Kodi buffer, but when i started noticing it in Windows 10 as well I assumed it wasn't a client issue... though that may not be an accurate assumption I suppose. I will look at that for Kodi, but can't for Win10.
As for disk spin-up... you are saying that disks other than what I am watching on spinning up may cause this? I expect the long delay when I first start a video on a spun down drive, but didn't think other disks would impact things. I will need to monitor what is going on better I guess.
thanks for the thoughts.

Thanks for the suggestions. Here are responses:
- Wireless - Nope... everything is wired. I have 1-2 Plex clients wireless, but the PC I am doing playback on now and all the Kodi clients are wired.
- Not that I am aware of, though unfortunately it's sporadic enough to make it hard to validate when playback is occurring on different floors of the house.
- When I was having this issue today there were no Plex streams. When Plex is running the streams are transcoded though. Plex is used for family & friends, my daughter's iPad, and one bedroom in the house (Roku). I believe all Plex streams are transcoded, but as mentioned... this happens without Plex running
- No, I don't think it's file corruption. I can re-watch the same section without issue. The video can pause and then jump 2-5 seconds, which is annoying during dialog, so it's not uncommon for me to rewind and rewatch, which I can do without issue.

I've been running UnRAID for several years to store my video library, but I have a recent issue with mulitple clients freezing periodically when playing videos (at least last 6-9 months). At first I thought it was a Kodi issue with one of my clients, but even watching videos in Windows 10 Films & TV I am noticing it. Some shows I can get through without issue, others may pause 2-4 times in an hour long TV show.
It's annoying to say the least.
I have a pretty robust system - Xeon processor, 32GB of memory and there are at most 2 separate video streams currently (though this can climb to 6-8 with Plex streams at times). It's confusing and honestly, I don't know where to search for the problem.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
cydstorage-diagnostics-20180426-1640.zip

I am trying to set up my first VM on UnRAID, and as I go through the installation when it gets to selecting the disk the list is blank, and it shows the message "We couldn't find any drives. To get a storage driver, click Load driver."
I've created a share on my cache disk, and configured the VMs to use it. I am unsure what to do, and would appreciate any assistance anyone can provide.
I am running 6.3.5. Not sure what other details I can provide to help clarify my enviornment

You other option, which would not require any change in hardware is to disable spin-down on the drive(s) that your media typically sits on. For most the power savings of spinning down the disks is worth the 3-5 second delay for the first show on a spun-down drive, but if it's that annoying for you, maybe leaving the drive spinning all the time is the way to go. I would think this is a way easier/cheaper solution to give you instant access to your content. you could even have all new media go to a single drive so you would only need to have that one spinning, and let the ones with older content spin down as normal.

The migration from single party to dual parity is pretty straight forward. You can just stop the array, assign the second parity disk and restart the array. It will then build the second parity for you.
If you are dead set on starting with dual parity you are likely going to want to wait for a bit. There is a beta18 of UnRAID 6.2 available that is the first public beta to include dual parity, but there have been a number of issues with NFS and SAMBA that would likely discourage you from moving to it today. That being said, LmeTech (LT) is working on beta19 that should hopefully address most of these issues. If you read through the 6.2-beta18 thread you will see discussions of people doing the single to dual parity upgrade process (as well as comments on the current issues identified and LTs responses).
For most of us without a spare/test box it will likely be several weeks/months before 6.2 is stable enough for us to move to, but rest assured that everyone running 6.1 today with single parity will be able to upgrade to 6.2 with dual parity when they feel the time is right. LT does a great job of supporting their existing userbase and trying to ensure no-one is left behind.

I have used this method in the past to buy cheap drives, crack the case and install in UnRAID, but can confirm you void the warranty. I had one drive go bad after a year, and had to buy a new drive to replace it. When you factor in that you may need to purchase a 2nd drive if one fails it's not such a good deal. I'd rather have the 3 year warranty behind me in case of issue - especially with these drives getting more and more expensive as capacity grows.
Not everyone will feel the same, but I think anyone who's had to throw out a drive just because you voided the warranty would think twice before buying an external drive for UnRAID again.

Yup.... that is pretty sad. "So, I want you to buy all this stuff for me on a whim", "Oh wait.. I am going to get killed for this (because I don't talk to my wife before spending $6K!!). Crap... well better you get screwed than me... I am outta here!!!"
Sounds like a fantastic friend.
I am glad it worked out for the OP though... that would have been a very expensive life lesson.

CPU selection is likely going to come down to how many Plex streams you want to run concurrently.
Typically when sizing, we use PassMark score to help assess. Each Plex stream will require 2000 ParkMark. The CPU you are looking at rates as follows:
AMD A8-7600 APU 5213
You can find this by searching for you CPU on the following site:
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php
So, you can safely run 2 Plex streams, so if you are not looking at VMs, and only want 2 Plex streams this gives you good headroom. If you think you need more from Plex then you may need to look at another CPU.

If you are planning on moving a lot of data to UnRAID, and you are writing directly to the array, it will be a slower transfer than normal as parity is continuously being written/updated. Many people start the array without the parity disk assigned, copy the data across at normal speeds, and then enable the parity disk and do a parity build and check.
It's a matter of preference on which path you take, but since the data is not protected currently wherever it's held most people don't see it as an additional risk to copy to UnRAID unprotected to get it there quickly, and then turn on protection. With parity enabled it's a 50% hit in data transfer I think.

For a bit of further clarity on this, you may want to check out the following thread:
http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=45072.msg430275#msg430275
For reference, your CPU lists as follows:
AMD Turion II Neo N54L Dual-Core Passmark: 1395
Given that you need a passmark of 2000 per Plex stream, it's not a surprise that you are not getting a good experience (though I understand it can work occasionally)
You have two options:
1) Upgrade your rig to support a CPU that will meet your needs (I would aim for a passmark of 4000 at a minimum so you could do two streams to future proof yourself a bit)
2) Move from Plex to Kodi. The primary difference is Plex is using the server CPU to transcode everything and the endpoint is just a dumb client (which is why it can be basically anything under the sun). Kodi does all the processing at the endpoint, so you can keep your server CPU, but will want a good dual core or quad core CPU on the endpoint (i.e. there are a ton of Android boxes that do this).

I did, and it clearly states Single socket H3 (LGA 1150) supports Intel® Xeon® E3-1200 v3/v4, 4th gen.Core i3, Pentium, Celeron processors. But my question is how could it support i3, but not i5 or i7?
here is an example of motherboard I was interested in:
http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/C220/X10SLH-F.cfm
I would guess it was a typo. As long as the sockets match I can't see why a motherboard would support i3, but not i5/i7. It doesn't make sense.

Not really necessary to do the stop, unassign, start, then replace. Just shutdown, replace, select new drive in place of old one, and start. I have done this very many times upsizing drives in my small case. While there is more risk doing it with a lot of drives, I don't think there is any other way that actually reduces the risk significantly. Just check the SMART for all drives before you start. If you upgrade to V6 first it will make it a lot easier to check SMART, and will also notify you of relevant SMART changes.
Good to know. I thought it needed to see the drive as missing first, hence the extra steps.

I would be surprised if you can hit your price mark.
Basically, when looking at Plex streaming most people use cpubenchmark.net to determine the best CPU for their needs. You need a passmark of 2000 for each Plex stream you want to run.
If you look at your current CPU you see the following:
AMD Phenom II X3 710 Passmark: 2460
This is why you can only do a single stream successfully.
If you want to do 5 streams you are looking at a passmark of 10,000, which puts you into the Xeon range, and likely $300+, not including a motherboard replacement and potentially memory replacement. You are likely looking at $600-800 for the upgrade. Trying to manage 4 streams is a little more manageable.
Use that website in conjunction with your preferred retailer and figure out what will actually meet your needs. If you are having difficulties, or need clarification, just post here and someone can offer some suggestions. Many of us are well versed in this.
Another consideration is to look at using Kodi inside your house. I use Plex for my daughter's iPad and external parties, but use Kodi clients in the house - this means that the clients do all the heavy lifting rather than the backend server, and you can buy a good client for $100-$150 to run Kodi. This may be a better solution for you.

I just recently did this to replace a 3TB with a 6TB drive.
You don't need to clear off the contents. Just stop the array, remove the 2TB from the array list, and start the array again. It will show the drive as missing. Stop the array, then put the 4TB drive into the missing slot and let UnRAID rebuild the drive with all of it's contents. This also gives you a backup of your data as it's still sitting on the 2TB drive you removed in the event of an issue.